


Alias

by quicksilverdeancas (quicksilvermalec)



Series: Sam Winchester Bingo [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (so it's probably shit), Gabriel Reads Fanfiction, Gabriel writes fanfiction, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I'm actually tagging Destiel on this one cause it's way more explicit, I'm so Fucking vulgar, I'm still annoyed that T&S is the only one that has a tag, Inspired by Fanfiction, Meta as hell, Other, Sam Fucking Winchester, Sam Fucking Winchester Fucking Bingo, Sam Winchester Reads Fanfiction, Sam Winchester Writes Fanfiction, Tumblr, ao3 - Freeform, bingo prompt, enjoy this bull, fuck T&S, i wrote this in two hours, inspired by Shipping It Like the Titanic - ScrollingKingfisher and WarlockWriter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 17:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20800208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverdeancas
Summary: So one day when he was safely alone, he pulled out his laptop and Googled ‘destiel’.This is how disasters get started.or, in which Sam is a goddamn idiot, Gabriel is an archangelremember???and Cas and Dean are... also there.





	Alias

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shipping it like the Titanic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17922530) by [ScrollingKingfisher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScrollingKingfisher/pseuds/ScrollingKingfisher), [WarlockWriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarlockWriter/pseuds/WarlockWriter). 

> This was written for the Sam Winchester Bingo. It covers the square "Sam/Gabriel".
> 
> Enjoy.

If Sam had to pinpoint when it started, he guessed he’d say that it started with the play.

After the Supernatural convention and besides their few brushes up against Becky and fanfic, he’d pretty much put the Supernatural books out of his mind. But then the play came up, as well as the topic of “Destiel” as the fans had dubbed it.

(And whoo, boy, Sam was more than on board for that. Sam’s stupid brother and his stupid angel had been pining after each other for so long and neither of them could pull their stupid heads out of their stupid asses long enough to figure out that their feelings were reciprocated. Sam just wanted it to be _over_.)

But after Dean’s reaction to the Destiel thing, he couldn’t help but wonder. So one day when he was safely alone, he pulled out his laptop and Googled ‘destiel’.

The first thing that popped up was a snippet from the Destiel page on something called the Shipping Wiki. All that told him was that **Destiel** is the slash between Dean and Castiel from the Supernatural fandom.

Nothing he didn’t already know. He scrolled down. There were some YouTube videos, one called “Destiel moments”, one called “Ten years of Destiel – Destiel Animatic”, and “my favorite Destiel moments”. Probably not what he was looking for either.

Urban Dictionary, Super-wiki, something that said Castiel/Dean Winchester – Works | Archive of Our Own (he’d need to come back to that, that looked interesting), an article, and then the result that caught his eye was **destiel | tumblr**.

It was a tag. Time to explore.

He opened the Archive of Our Own thing in a new tab and clicked on tumblr. As soon as the page loaded (which took a minute), he was met with six-page-long detailed analyses of Cas and Dean’s relationship, gifsets, ‘headcanons’ (which he later learned were a fan’s own ideas about a pairing or character that could fit into canon but weren’t explicitly stated), fanart, and fanfiction. Lots and lots of fanfiction.

He could work with that.

Over the next several hours, he read maybe two hundred oneshots and five or six full fics ranging from 5k to 23k words in length. By the time he heard the familiar crunch of the Impala’s tires on the gravel outside, he was convinced that he needed to create a blog.

And just then he noticed his Archive tab and remembered that he hadn’t even checked that out. Which meant he was about to eat whatever rabbit-food his brother tossed at him in his bedroom holed up with his laptop. Which… actually sounded pretty awesome, now that he was considering it seriously.

He explored Archive of Our Own, played with the filtering tool, created an account, clicked on various tags from different stories, and found out that it could be shortened to AO3… not particularly in that order.

He clicked back to tumblr after a few hours and created an account there, too, and thankfully his username wasn’t taken. He smiled as he made his way back to the destiel tag to reblog some people’s shit.

He was having fun now, cruising through tumblr like he owned the place, having finally figured out how everything worked, and reblogging fanfics and fanart all over the place and then something else struck him the wrong way.

“Is that _Gabriel_?”

He clicked on the post, opened it in a new tab and yep, there he was in all his archangelic glory. Gabriel was drawn – very accurately – with his hands out, smiling gently down at… Sam’s jaw dropped.

That was him. The picture was tagged with #sam winchester #gabriel #sabriel #samgabe and #gabesam (as well as #destiel thanks to the tiny figures of Dean and Castiel in the background), and something about that just didn’t sit right with him.

Not because of Gabriel being in a male vessel. No, Sam had never really cared about gender when it came to the people he liked. He’d had a trend of women, especially recently, just because he hadn’t really met any guys that he’d felt were worth it. It was because that was a little too close to home for him. Because back when he was just a janitor, Sam had felt an immediate attraction, a spark, and when he was the Trickster, Sam had still wanted to kiss him instead of kill him. And then he was Gabriel, the all-powerful archangel, and… Sam really liked him.

They hadn’t interacted as much as he’d wished they had, but he sort of didn’t care. It was one of those gut feelings. He’d just _known _right at the beginning that he would like this guy.

He then went down a whole other rabbit-hole of analyses of minute details, the smallest things in their few scenes together, headcanons, oneshots, plot ideas… everything snowballed and by 11pm he really needed sleep but instead he was writing a Sabriel fic.

What could he do?

It was severe, hardcore angst, but that was, after all, the story of Sam’s life. He found himself pouring all of his guilt and anger and anguish into the story, painting a very accurate picture of his own misery into his Word document. And when he was done, up it went, onto his AO3 account, tagged with every warning.

And instead of sleeping that night, he kept perusing tumblr. It was almost like an addiction – finding posts, making posts, cross-posting his fic to tumblr, reblogging, hearting, and just continuing on his journey down the rabbit hole.

#~+~#

**Sampala_lover:**[1]****

_Because he didn’t want to let Gabriel go. He didn’t want him to move on and keep living, archangel-mojoing between clubs and screwing random people and falling in love (okay, Sam _really _didn’t want to think about him falling in love again). But he didn’t have a choice, because Gabriel didn’t seem to even love him at all anymore_.

THIS PARAGRAPH KILLED ME! *sobs uncontrollably* HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME????

(but thank you for the angst, it was very good. can’t wait for the next one😉!)

#~+~#

The next time he checked, the following day, he already had 50 kudos on his one fic, as well as 90 hits and several comments that all said close to the same thing.

So he pulled up a word document and started to write another one. More feelings, this time directed primarily at his brother, who was a goddamn idiot. This one included Dean and Cas figuring their own shit out in time with Sam and Gabriel, but with much more difficulty.

He got stuck on one scene and took a break, clicking over to tumblr. Seeing how many followers he’d gotten overnight, he was struck with a burst of inspiration and smiled. He created a new text post and typed out a quick request.

**true-moose:  
**Hey, who would like to be my new official beta for my fics? I’m realizing that I need one.

The responses came flooding in within half an hour, but he picked the first one he saw.

**_Team-Free-Winchester_** – a very devoted Sabriel blog. He looked through some of their stuff and found some pretty well-written fic, as well as several reblogged recommendations from other tumblr users saying that they’re a great beta. He smiled and private messaged them.

**_true-moose: _**hi, I’m Moose, he/him. You want to be my beta?

**_Team-Free-Winchester: _**Will if you like, or if you want to give me a nickname, that works too. whatever pronouns are fine. hellz yeah!

Sam laughed and replied.

**_true-moose:_** well you’re hired. Can you help me out with this part?

He sent them everything he had so far and waited for a response, browsing the #sam winchester tag on tumblr until he got it. He reblogged several things he found before he got his answer back.

**_Team-Free-Winchester: _**what if we imply that Cas is depowered here and we give them some juicy angst – Cas healing Sam using human methods and he sends Dean away?

**_true-moose:_** that’s it. That’s what I needed. Thank you so much!

But the conversation didn’t stop there. It flowed easily into Sam messaging Will as he typed, asking for help with characterization (though that was rare, considering he knew these people in real life), fleshing out moments, making it more believable that Dean was drunk.

Just as he was finishing the fic and preparing to create the draft on AO3 to publish it, he got another message from Will.

**_Team-Free-Winchester:_** offline a min. brb

He posted the fic and when he returned to tumblr, he found that Will had reblogged something that he’d reblogged.

**Fangasmtotherescue:  
**I don’t know why people like Sam. He made so many mistakes. He’s so fucking toxic to Dean and Cas and they’d be better off without him.

**true-moose:**  
Yeah. I mean, he did open the gate to hell. He released Lucifer. He betrayed Dean for Ruby. He slaughtered people ruthlessly while he was soulless. He was basically a blood junkie. Every single thing that he’s done so far has been really bad for the people that he cares about in some way or another. At this point, why is he even still here? Maybe he should’ve just stayed in the Pit.

**Team-Free-Winchester:  
**I don’t agree. I mean, yes, Sam has done some pretty bad things, but he didn’t do them on purpose. I’m not saying that they should be excused, only forgiven. I mean, come on. The demon blood, Ruby, Lucifer, that was back in what, season 4? It’s been a while since then. Why can’t we get over it? The demon blood he only did because he was trying to save other people, and even if it was misguided the intentions were good. Ruby _saved his life_ and manipulated him _very effectively _throughout the entire time he knew her, and don’t forget that he held her down while Dean murdered her. And Lucifer… he was, as I said, being manipulated by Ruby to think that he was going to stop Lucifer from rising even though what he was doing was actually the opposite. So I forgive Sam for the stuff he’s done. I actually happen to think that he’s a really compelling character. Tbh, if any of the characters deserves this kind of harsh criticism, it’s Gabriel.

Sam stared at his screen for a minute. No, there was no way that that was a popular opinion. Just this one radical fan who wanted to spread their own version of the story. Well, back to the PMs he went.

**_true-moose: _**_Gabriel?_ Gabriel, the archangel, who was just trying to protect his family? Gabriel, with the tragic backstory and the whole emotional pitch about the Apocalypse? You think that _Gabriel _is the worst character in the books? Where in the nine hells did you get that opinion from?

**_Team-Free-Winchester:_** Gabriel tried to kill them in Tall Tales! And then in Mystery Spot he just murders Dean in front of Sam over a hundred times and you will never be able to convince me that Sam doesn’t have some major PTSD from that motherfucker. And in Changing Channels, he keeps messing with them, telling them to let the angels just burn them out of their bodies. He doesn’t help them over and over and then when he does, it’s as a last-ditch to try and be redeemable. And he wasn’t even really dead! If you really look at it, Gabriel has sacrificed exactly _nothing_ for the Winchesters.

**_true-moose:_** you’re wrong. Gabriel was trying to help Sam in Mystery Spot, Sam just didn’t realize it at the time. Gabriel was trying to help them in Tall Tales, too or at least to stay out of their way, and don’t he also spent most of that time hardcore flirting with Sam and then remembering that Dean was there too.  
**_true-moose: _**And in Changing Channels he was bitter. Because he spent all that time – the hundred-something Tuesdays and the six months that never happened – trying to help Sam with his codependency on his brother… in his own messed up and somewhat ineffective way. He was trying to help Sam be able to handle it so that he could potentially _prevent_ the Apocalypse. But Sam wouldn’t listen to him, Sam would never have actually taken his lesson to heart, because he was just trying to save his brother, and that was all he ever cared about.

**_Team-Free-Winchester:_** agree to disagree I guess.

Sam sighed, his shoulders slumping.

**_true-moose: _**guess so.

#~+~#

_“Sammy, you’re hurt,” Dean protested, opening his door and stepping out but standing in the way of Sam getting into the seat._

_Sam looked at him for a second, then made an impulse decision. He pulled his left fist back and punched his brother squarely in the jaw._

_“See, Dean?” he said afterward. “I’m fine.”_

-Excerpt from _This Is My Kingdom Come_ by true-moose[2] on AO3

#~+~#

Sam quickly expanded into Destiel territory as well, usually writing fics involving Dean and Cas as well as himself and Gabriel, but occasionally posting pure Destiel.

His friendship with Will grew as well, away from just fic and into venting about life and sharing their own issues with each other. That’s not to say they stopped writing fic about Sam and Gabriel together – far from it. They collaborated a lot and beta’d each other’s fics almost exclusively (which, of course, led to Will making plenty of dating and exclusivity jokes).

And it was fine. It was all just… fine. Until Don’t Try to Save Me rolled around.

Sam pitched Will the idea at 1 in the morning one day in the middle of July. He hadn’t expected Will to be up, just wanted to put the idea out into the world, but only five minutes after he sent the message, he got a notification from tumblr saying Will had replied.

**_true-moose:_** I just had a really great idea for an extended fic  
**_true-moose:_** established Sabriel/Destiel. transmac!Dean for Plot Reasons because mpreg freaks me out. open on Dean giving birth to Castiel’s kid. Sam’s in the room with him but Cas is conspicuously missing and Dean’s sorta kinda a little bit grieving for him cause everybody thinks he’s dead. couple days later, Dean has a healthy baby Nephilim named Cooper Gabriel Novak-Winchester and Cas magically appears in his kitchen. he doesn’t know why he was gone for ten weeks and he doesn’t really remember them at all. and then le time skip to several years later and Cas randomly gets amnesia to before Dean was even pregnant so doesn’t remember their wedding, doesn’t remember Dean being pregnant and doesn’t remember raising the kid  
**_true-moose:_** and then there’s a sideplot of like, Gabriel really wanting to propose to Sam but he keeps either chickening out or getting interrupted. and Dean ships Sabriel like so hard and wants Gabe to propose

**_Team-Free-Winchester:_** write it

Sam grinned. This was going to be a ride to remember.

It didn’t look like he was getting any sleeping done tonight, so he pulled up a new Word doc and started to type whatever came into his head. Three hours later and Will had beta’d him a first chapter that he was then ready to post.

It was weird writing from Dean’s perspective, but it wasn’t anything he’d never done before. He just always felt like there was something he was getting wrong. He knew his brother extremely well and it wasn’t too likely that he was fucking up his characterization, but he didn’t want to assume anything about the things that Dean had thought and felt, especially when it came to Cas.

So he was always more careful writing Dean than writing either Sam or Gabriel. He rarely wrote Castiel’s perspective anyway, so he didn’t stress over that part too much.

But the entire first chapter ended up being a Dean chapter. The second chapter was as well. The third chapter was the Destiel wedding. Fourth chapter came out to about an even 50-50 split between the Dean- and Sam-centric storylines, but it was all Dean POV up until the last three paragraphs – random Castiel out of nowhere.

And then Will went silent. He posted a comment on chapter 4, saying “that’s a cliffhanger if I ever read one. get me that next chapter STAT <3” and not five minutes later wasn’t online when Sam tried to PM him. The following day he was gone, too. He was gone long enough for Sam to finish the entire fic and leave it sitting in his drafts because he had nobody to beta it for him.

Not that he was particularly worried about that, because then suddenly there was an archangel in his life.

Gabriel popped up the day after Will stopped answering Sam’s PMs. But he didn’t just show up – no, he practically slammed their door down.

Once they were all silent and staring at him in awe, he announced, “DEAN WINCHESTER! I have walked all over the earth, searching far and wide and alas, I could not find your heterosexuality” and then he shoved Dean into a grace-locked closet with Castiel and mojoed Sam to Paris.

In the space of forty-five seconds.

Needless to say, Sam was not amused. “Dude, take me the fuck back to the bunker! Why are we in Paris?”

“Because, I needed to get away from your brother and my brother and their absolutely off-the-charts amounts of unresolved sexual and romantic tension.”

Sam pulled his arm away from where Gabriel had been resting one hand on it. “Dude, you’ve been ‘away’ for like, three years! You’ve just been gone! Even when we needed you… when _I _needed you, Gabriel, you weren’t here. So don’t- just don’t feed me that bullshit.”

Gabriel’s smirk just widened. “That wasn’t how internet-you felt about me.”

Sam blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about, ‘here I am, standing under a streetlamp in the middle of assfuck nowhere, shirtless, at 1 in the morning, telling you how stupid in love with you I am. Cause I am, asshole. I love you.’[3]”

Sam’s jaw dropped. “How’d you know I wrote that?”

“Cause I beta’d it!”

All the puzzle pieces abruptly clicked together in Sam’s mind, hard enough to give him a splitting headache. “_You’re_ Will?”

Gabriel nodded vigorously. “Damn straight I’m Will. And yes, I knew it was you after three days. I’m an archangel. To quote your brother, ‘call it personal experience’. Nobody gets _that _hatred-y about anybody except themselves. I checked.”

“Hatred-y?” Sam muttered. That was what he needed to latch onto to stay sane. “That’s not a word.”

“It is now. Anyway, are you going to do the thing that fake-you in every fic you’ve ever written has done, or are we just going to keep standing here 100 meters from the Eiffel Tower staring at each other?”

Sam sighed and grabbed Gabriel’s arm, pulling him flush against his own body roughly and kissing him hard – harder even than he did in his fanfics.

When he pulled away, breathing hard, his face slightly flushed, he said, “okay, now take me back, because you have four more chapters to beta. You absolute _asshole_.”

Gabriel smiled genuinely at him then, and Sam was astounded to see it. It was different from the smirk he was so accustomed to, and it made him look infinitely younger and infinitely happier.

He snapped his fingers, and the two men disappeared, leaving several people in the streets of Paris absolutely dumbfounded.

[1] Every Time I Open Up It Hurts

[2] actually, This Is My Kingdom Come by quicksilverdeancas (quicksilvermalec) but *scoff* whatever

[3] Mistakes Have Been Made

**Author's Note:**

> All three of those fics that are excerpted in this - _Every Time I Open Up, It Hurts, This Is My Kingdom Come_ and _Mistakes Have Been Made_ \- are available on my AO3 account. So, you know. Go check that shit out ;-)
> 
> Love,  
-Dean


End file.
